


The Stars Divined

by xxsnailxx



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Magizoologist!Harry, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, vampire!Tom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-23
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-25 03:37:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17113730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xxsnailxx/pseuds/xxsnailxx
Summary: The first time Harry sees his Soulmate, he doesn’t realise it. Not for about half a minute, anyway.





	The Stars Divined

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Miistical](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miistical/gifts).



> I really really hope you like this >_<

“Don't do it just because your mark suggests your Soulmate will like it,” is and has always been the most common advice adults give their charges. A pair fated to meet will meet, and a pair fated to love will love; and it rarely goes according to how the marks are interpreted, anyway.

Well, Harry scoffs to himself in the waiting room for his job interview, too fucking late.

It's not that he regrets taking up Magizoology — in fact, he finds he actually does love the thrill of meeting new creatures, of there always being something new to learn about them — but throwing away all his potential to be an Auror? Turning down all the offers he received from Quidditch teams? That hurt, a little. And he's not that good with creatures, even; the fact that he actually has to go job hunting should have been enough to dissuade him, nevermind that he was one of the only students who still can't tell most species apart (colour vision is pretty essential for that) and that competition for both NEWTs and jobs is steep. But no, Harry has a reputation for being stubborn and he would like to keep it, thank you very much. It saves him from nagging frequently enough to be an asset.

“Well, come on in then,” his future boss (hopefully) says, as if it were obvious Harry shouldn’t have waited in the waiting room. Obviously, he should have just burst in. Duh. Harry hasn’t been to enough job interviews to know the protocol, damn him.

He settles comfortably in the ‘interviewee’ armchair in the office (the usual — a horn or two adorning the walls, and tanks of magical creatures scattered about the perimeter) and the interview begins.

It is, of course, the one question Harry was hoping he wouldn’t ask. (It’s also the one question he knows is standard. So.)

“I see you were scouted by the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, as well as multiple Quidditch teams — including the Falcons and Puddlemere, truly impressive — so, surely, you must be very passionate about Magizoology? Tell me what you like about it, and what sparked your interest.”

Thankfully, Harry has prepared (mentally, a little bit) for this. “Well,” he starts, real smooth, exuding confidence and surety and what not, “I— my Mom is Lily Evans, after all.” He laughs a little, hoping against hope that it’ll diffuse some of the awkwardness. “She used to bring home all sorts of weird little stings and bite marks, and creatures, sometimes. I guess I picked it up from her?”

His (probably no longer) future boss smiles in a vaguely sympathetic way. Harry tries not to think about what exactly he's feeling sorry for — his awkwardness, his terrible lie-telling or the fact that he has to live up to being Lily Evans' only son. Probably all of them. He should, maybe, probably, ask for the guy's name.

(He does. It earns him an amused eyebrow and nothing else. Harry's naming him Weird.)

The silence stretches painful for another half-minutes, and Harry realises Weird is waiting for him to expound, or give a more truthful answer. Oh, well. “I haven’t met my Soulmate.” He removes his glove to show Weird, the pair of crimson slits on the back of his wand hand. “Red snake eyes,” he describes, just in case the man can’t see them. (Don’t ask how he knows they’re snake eyes, he just  _ does _ .) “It must have sparked my interest in snakes. I’ve been obsessed with finding snakes in our garden for as long as I can remember.”

The unimpressed look Weird favours him with makes Harry shut up. No divulging the last bit, then. Whatever. “You were in Slytherin,” Weird notes amusedly. “Cute.”

_ What _ .

Cute? Hah.

“I prefer birds myself,” Weird confesses. “I’ll let you handle our reptilian cases, then. What kind of salary are you thinking of?”

_ What _ .

“Three meals a day would be sufficient,” Harry says, because he’s pretty sure he signed up for a non-profit organisation. And because the Potters have enough of a fortune to support him if he had decided instead to start several failed businesses in succession, nevermind that he’s also the sole heir to the Black fortune.

“You’re hired,” Weird declares, and slides a folder across the desk. “Go, start working.”

 

So it begins. The folder, it doesn’t have a contract in it. (Well.) And it’s titled ‘Scalie’.

( _ Well. _ )

His first assignment is… to retrieve a snake? Apparently, — wherever it is this portkey is supposed to take him in a minute  — became frosty very quickly, and Harry is to check on the cold blooded creatures in the area. A footnote at the bottom of the page suggests locals are particularly worried about a non-native snake they’d noticed in the area in recent months.

Okay.

Except Harry has been transported to an open area. There are hills, yes, but he’s on a land of relatively higher altitude, and he can confidently say that no, there are no local establishments to report non-native snakes. There is, however, actually a lot of snow. He can’t tell for sure, but it seems like everything in his 500m radius is white (or, a very very light colour) save the trees (a forest?) downhill. Those look both a little darker and a little lighter in colour than your average trees. Snow has that strange effect.

He has no idea how he’s supposed to find a snake here. He doesn’t know the breed — not that he would be able to recognise it on sight, but at least he’d know  _ where _ to look for it — or even his location, and hence what constitutes as ‘non-native’. And the whole place is covered in snow.

So Harry does the obvious thing.

“ _ Accio _ snake.”

Nothing happens.

(It’s all about having an  _ image _ in mind, and knowing  _ where  _ you want to summon from, and  _ visualising _ the path the summoned object would take. Of course it didn’t work.)

So Harry does the next obvious thing.

“Point me, snake.”

(The most he’ll say about the outcome is that  _ something happened _ , at least.)

When Plan A and Plan B have failed, Harry is left with the last obvious solution. He sits down (after casting a warming charm and the Impervius Charm) and opens the folder again. Reads the assignment, looks for footnotes, casts for invisible ink, and then reads through the entire folder. Or, he really, really, would have.

Except he doesn’t, because he looks up after having read the second page, and sees a figure in dark robes, standing out against the white backdrop.

(Later, he would look back on this exact moment, and laugh, because this has to be the worst possible scene in which to first see colour. Or, second worst, because now that he thinks about it, Azkaban is also plenty grey. But he would remember this scene well, for even at that very moment, something shifted.)

The figure — a man, Harry decides after a second’s observation — has dark hair, and skin so fair the little Harry can see seems to only a shade darker than the snow that surrounds them. His features, Harry can barely make out through the snow and the distance, but he’s tall, and his posture, regal. And, coiled around his left arm and torso, is a — white? Or very, very pale — snake.

He approaches at a leisurely pace, while Harry succeeds in not retreating. Something (everything) about the man was just  _ intimidating _ , and Harry’s not even sure if it’s him or the snake he’s morbidly curious about. Perhaps both, or he’d have fled already. And then Harry realises (it’s a little hard  _ not  _ to, with the increasing proximity) that both the man’s (he’s doubtful about that, not) and his snake’s eyes are red.

And not the same shade of red, either.

Harry knows; he’s grown up seeing nothing but white, black, grey, and that very, very specific shade of red. The same colour as an  _ Expelliarmus _ and literally nothing else; a point of colour he’s seen on a red gradient, on what would otherwise have been yet another black-white one. And he sees that colour, now, in the eyes of the mysterious man standing above him.

And he sees another pair of eyes a lighter shade of red, the shape of the mark on his hand, blinking lazily down at him from a scaly face of white — and he knows that for sure, now.

 

Behind the man, in the sky, in the clouds of grey, Harry notices for the first time, was a tinge of the colour that must be blue.

 

_ “A seer,” Tom confesses on their first date, in a bar that would have been the very definition of classy had it not smelt so strongly of blood, “told me that I had a long while to wait.” _

_ “So you went in search of immortality.” _

_ “So I did.” _

 

Then the man speaks. “A seer suggested it would be an opportune time to call a shelter for Nagini.” He smiles, and his teeth are way too sharp, the cave of his mouth, too red. “I must confess I rather agree with her.”

“You're a Vampire,” Harry says dumbly.

He tilts his head, and says, “You're a Magizoologist.”

Well.

 

_ “And of course you chose the path of blood sucking.” _

_ Tom merely sips his coffee — Harry didn't know Vampires drink coffee until the very moment Tom ordered it, albeit seasoned with the blood of a virgin. Supposedly, it's nutritious. (Harry knows for certain that what it is, is notoriously _ sweet. _ ) “It was that or tearing my soul apart. I assumed you wouldn't like the latter option.” _

 

“Speaking of,” Harry's soulmate says (he speaks a lot), “this is Nagini. The weather here is too cold for her, so if you would…” He extends his arm, and the snake, like an extension of his will, slithers down it.

_ Ah _ . A familiar; his spirit animal. Not an uncommon form for a soulmark. It's tied to his soul, after all. Harry's not sure if that's a valid cause for jealousy, but a tiny fraction of his heart evidently thinks it is.

“Yes, of course. What breed is she?” A beautiful one, that's for sure. Harry strokes the scales under her chin and she preens, curling around his arm.

“No idea.”

Well. Harry had no idea what exactly he was expecting of his Soulmate, but someone who doesn't know the first thing about his own familiar — okay, he does know, she's a snake and doesn't survive very well in cold weather, but then so does every 3 year old — was not what he was expecting. (He’d selfishly hoped he would at least balance out Harry's impulsiveness.) “You know if she's venomous, at least?”

“Oh, definitely. No one's survived a bite to date.”

(His hand does  _ not _ tighten reflexively around the snake. He's a trained Magizoologist, he knows better.) Nagini hisses at Harry in annoyance. (“ _ It's not like I bite everyone, _ ” she's protesting.) “So you don't know if there are any antidotes…?”

“I assume the herbalist must have tried all the common ones. Don't worry, Nagini wouldn't bite anyone unless I explicitly tell her to.”

He's reminded abruptly of an overprotective parent, willfully blind to their child's faults. (Then again, what would Harry know about familiars?) “Snakes tend to react badly to sudden changes in their environment.”

“She'll behave.”

 

(She does, but she also complains very loudly and proudly about the chaos she brings to the office, with everyone wanting to get their obsessively curious paws on the snake of unknown breed, with a supposedly incurable venom.)

 

_ “Wait,” Harry has a sudden epiphany. “Why in Merlin's name were you living in the bloody North Pole? There isn't even blood or a covent there.” _

_ Tom shrugs. “A seer suggested it.” _

**Author's Note:**

>  ~~There's a fluffier second part coming up, I promise! By uh... hopefully, Christmas?~~ (Edit: it didn't work out... oooops.) Gah. But for now — Merry Christmas!!


End file.
